Janie asked if she could help and I couldn’t think of a Good Mommy reason to say no.

The results weren’t . . . quite as expected, but they were Janie’s first muffins, which should be celebrated.

So here we go:

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Ingredients

1 c. all-purpose flour (bleached, unbleached, whatever)

1 c. yellow cornmeal (because white cornmeal muffins are just wrong)

4 tsp. baking powder

½ tsp. salt

¼ c. sugar

2 eggs

1-¼ c. milk (we use 1%, but whatever you’ve got)

2 Tbsp. oil (the recipe says canola, but I use olive because I think it tastes better in this)

1 c. cream-style corn (from the can, baby)*

One Janie (as usual, a generic nine-year old can be substituted**)

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Procedure:

Set the oven to 425F°, or whatever you set your oven to when recipes ask for 425F°.

Have Janie measure out and dump the dry ingredients in a bowl—or in our house, the 2-quart Pyrex measuring cup with the handle—hand her a whisk and tell her to hold the handle with one hand and gently combine the dry stuff until everything turns a pale yellow, which is another reason to leave the white cornmeal to the nouveaus.

Break the eggs into a small bowl—or catch the tossed whisk as Janie hollers, “I’ll do it!” and get out of the way because she hasn’t taken off her heavy boots like you asked her to do—add the oil and beat with the wisk until just after the yolks take over. Add the cream-style corn and mix it in with something other than the whisk, unless you enjoy picking wet corn bits out of a wire cage, because I don’t. Add the milk and give it another mix.

Give Janie a rubber spatula and show her how to make a hole in the dry stuff, explaining how the wet stuff would otherwise float around on top. Once she has it arranged to her satisfaction, dump in the wet stuff yourself—unless cleaning something that looks a lot like . . . look, just be careful—while ignoring Janie’s cries of yuck.

Let Janie stir them together until it gets too difficult or spattering seems imminent, then take over until the dry ingredients are just moist. Try not to overmix, although it might be too late.

Let Janie spray your muffin tin or let her put paper cups into it, which is probably the safer option. Spoon the mixture into the center two cups and let her put a spoonful into each of the others, turning the tin to help, though she’ll most likely just reach across anyway. Distribute the rest of the batter yourself once she gets bored.

Bake for 18-22 minutes—because the original recipe is clearly joking about 25 minutes, unless someone accidentally switched titles with the recipe for charcoal hockey pucks.

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If you follow this recipe exactly and thoroughly mix the dry ingredients and set the oven at the right temperature, you will get twelve somethings with a tender moist inside and a light, buttery skin that probably won’t look like this:

Which, as it turns out, will seriously disappoint your kids, because they will fight over the deformed muffins and ask you why they all don’t have trunks.

So if anyone’s interested, there appears to be a ready niche*** market for any cook who can figure out what went wrong and consistently repeat the “mistake.”

We even came up with a name for ’em: Snuffleupamuffins!^

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*If you’re worried about what to do with the scant cup of leftover cream-style corn—and you will be because no one in their right mind would eat this stuff by itself—you have three options: double the recipe; make slightly less corny muffins before it starts to harbor things that are too bacterial to be in their right minds; or dump it (I won’t tell).

**Though if she doesn’t get moving on her Academic Fair Project instead of diddling around and complaining that I’m making way too big a deal of a project that is a third of her grade and is due Monday, I will gladly loan her out for extended periods of time.

***Neesh? Noosh? Lyra?

^When I told my kids that when I was their age, everyone on Sesame Street thought Mr. Snuffleupagus was Big Bird’s imaginary friend because he always wandered off before Big Bird could get anyone to come meet him, they were stunned. “Whoa, Mom. How long ago was that?” For those of you keeping score, Snuffy was finally revealed in 1985, when I was fifteen. For those of you who might wonder if I saw that particular episode when it aired . . . keep wondering.

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14 thoughts on “Cooking with a Nine-Year Old: Snuffleupamuffins”

Cute story and a great experience to cook with kids. The muffins look great. And I bet they were delicious. On a different note, I recall when Mr. Snuffleupagus was “introduced.” My kids are amazed when I tell them I remember the 1st Sesame Street episode.

Science fair (heck….any) projects always waited until the night before to finish. And I always had to ask…What did WE get for a grade?

All the muffins were inhaled in about ten minutes flat, which tickled Janie no end. Less ticklish was helping me clean up all the batter blobs. 🙂

I was born about seven or eight months after Sesame Street’s premiere, and it’s always irked me that I can’t say I was there at the beginning. But there’s a snapshot somewhere of my two-year-old self sitting in front of the television holding my new kitten in front of my face so she could see the show, too. As I recall, that’s when I learned how not to hold a cat—Sesame Street has taught me so much!

I don’t recall waiting at the last minute for a major project, or my grades, though I’m sure selective memory has a lot to do with that . . . Mom?

I have better arranged counter space than you did with me and my kids are far better at puppy dog eyes than I ever was. Janie says she’s making them for you guys when you come up, so we’ll see if we can practice getting them to look, “just like grandpa’s nose.”

This is such a great post, Sarah! Last week I made Peach Cobbler with my nine-year old. (She had international dessert day last Monday, and since my family is from the south, she made the cobbler.) We had a great time!

Oh… I LOVE to eat the deformed muffins, too!

And, while I don’t remember the episode in which people on Sesame Street realized that Snuffy existed, I remember hearing about that episode. (I was in college at the time and no longer watched Sesame Street — not that I didn’t want to watch it; I just didn’t have the time!!)

You are a brave man—I would still be cleaning peaches from every available surface!

Seriously, cobbler is a terrific recipe for kids—it’s interesting, relatively easy and it isn’t supposed to look the same way twice. I shouldtry berry cobbler with Janie sometime (but I’ll put down plastic first)!

See, I knew there was an untapped market for weird muffins! 🙂

Mom used to watch Sesame Street while she did the Nordic Trak (remember those?) and she’s the one who told me. She also told me when Louis and Maria were married. . .

It does take a lot of patience to work with kids in the kitchen. I didn’t let the first two help me as much as I let the youngest help me. She has a way of insisting, if you know what I mean.

We’ll have to try this recipe. We make corn pudding which has a slightly different recipe and I’d eat the left over creamed corn. Put it on the stove for a minute, add a little sugar and pepper and it is delicious.